Words Upon a Place – A project from the DK DESIS Lab

This is a project developed by the DK DESIS Lab, Denmark, which corresponds to the series of Thematic Areas. These projects are activities carried out by the DESIS Network Labs, whose objectives can be seen here

The increased mobility of people across the world is a premise that needs to be taken into account and cities must be designed towards being able to accommodate that. Placing newcomers in segregated places in cities is not the solution. The design experiment “Words Upon a Place” uses the design process and placement of four interactive benches, situated in two locations in the Danish city, Kolding: The deprived social housing neighbourhood, Skovparken, and the Library Park, to explore how design can be used to create coherence across the city, interaction between people and support social life.

The project started with preparations for two participant workshops – ‘Story Telling Cafe’ for which the participants were invited through Facebook and personal network. The workshops were conducted in a participatory process, by directly bringing the content to the design product (the benches) in whatever way they felt safe, entertained or wished to expose themselves. The role of the citizens was to tell their stories from one of the two places.